[gobo-eiffel-develop] Proposed mail to licensing@gnu.org

[Christian C. <chr...@tu...>]

Hi,

Thanks to Greg Reagle, here is an improved version of the mail I propose to 
send to lic...@gn... :

================================================================

Hello GNU licensing gurus,

For a long time many people in the Eiffel programming language [1] community 
have been developing Free Software using the Eiffel Forum License Version 1 
[2].

The Eiffel Forum License (EFL) is now OSI approved [3] but it is not listed 
in the GNU license list [4].

This is a hardship for our project, the Gobo Eiffel Project [5], and also 
for other free software projects using the EFL or the GPL, because it 
prevents some people from contributing or from joining these projects.

For example here is an excerpt from an email exchange we just had with 
Gregory Reagle, the author of the Optimus code [6] :

************************

> I would be happy if I could use Optimus as a base to the command 
> line parsing classes in Gobo

It would make me happy too!

> but unfortunately Optimus is released under the GPL licence and Gobo under
> the Eiffel Forum Licence. Could you do something about this ?

Okay, I am willing to release Optimus under a free software license that is
compatible with the GPL.  I want someone who is writing a GPL'd program to be
able to use my library without problem.  Some examples of such licenses are
the license of X11, the BSD license without the advertising clause, and the
W3C software license.  For more information, including links to these
licenses, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html.  Unfortunately,
the Eiffel Forum License (EFL) is not listed there.  I think that it probably
is compatible with the GPL, but I want it to be "officially" recognized and
I know that I'm not qualified to judge license compatibility.

************************

So could you please review the Eiffel Forum License [2], tell us if it is GPL 
compatible, and anyway list it among the other free software licenses on your 
web site ?

This would surely help us spread the Free Software word in the Eiffel world. 

Thanks in advance,
xxx on behalf of the Gobo Eiffel Project

[1] http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_eiffel.html
[2] http://www.gobosoft.com/eiffel/gobo/license.html
[3] http://www.opensource.org/licenses/eiffel.php
[4] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
[5] http://www.gobosoft.com/eiffel/gobo/
[6] http://userpages.umbc.edu/~greagl1/optimus/optimus.html

================================================================

I also made a few changes by myself.

Until now Andreas and Greg have found it a good idea to send this mail but 
except Lothar noone else gave their opinion about it.

So Eric for example could you like to send this mail yourself ? I think it 
would be better that you send it, but if you prefer I can send it.

Regards,
Christian.